


Ghosts

by VictoriannWings



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alforan - Freeform, Angst, Flowers, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, Love, M/M, Platonic Relationships, Space Uncle Coran (Voltron), Star-crossed, he would die for Allura, quiznak, you all know it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-29 19:04:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12091437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VictoriannWings/pseuds/VictoriannWings
Summary: He’d done nothing but been there for Alfor, took care of his daughter, loved her like she was his own. He’d spent every molecule of his being as a devoted lover and faithful trustee and with everything that he did, he proved how much he loved Alfor. But Coran had let his heart stay silently broken for too long.





	Ghosts

His hands shook as he clicked the last piece into place. He’d been working silently when Allura was asleep for months--had it already been months? Coran didn’t really know. He’d spent so much time and energy working on trying to bring the AI machine back to life, and he’d lost track of it all. It didn’t matter. He needed to fix it. He just couldn’t bare to live without him anymore. 

 Coran pressed the switch and the machine began to hum. So much of the castle’s database buzzed inside of this device, lined the room with its energy, almost causing the air to vibrate. Coran took a deep breath to steady himself. If this worked out, he would be able to talk to Alfor again. He’d spent ages running copies of the original programming, debugging and defragging until he could patch together what he thought was Alfor’s coding. It  _ needed _ to be. Coran needed it to be. 

 He needed Alfor. And as much as it tore him apart to lose his beloved, it hurt all over again to watch Allura grieve, the sadness lining her movements and weighing her down. Coran wanted more than anything to protect her, to keep her safe and happy, like he’d promised Alfor that he would. 

 Clearly Coran was doing a wonderful job of that, he thought bitterly. The machine trembled beneath his touch and he ran his fingertips over the warm, smooth surface. His hand stopped and rested over the switch. Once he pressed this button, he would be face to face with the long dead love of his life. Once he pressed this button, he could talk to Alfor again. 

 What would Coran even say?

 His chest tightened. Mountain-high piles of words made his breathing difficult and he wanted to pour them all forth, to be able to articulate exactly how much he missed Alfor, but Coran found himself silent and staring at the whirring machine. His hand hovered over the switch in indecision. What if this didn’t work? What if he’d spent all of his months and sleepless nights aching for nothing?

 But he couldn’t wait any longer, and if the machine didn’t work...well, Coran would just avoid sleep for a little while more. 

 His fingers smoothed over the switch and the machine began to light up. He held his breath. He didn’t dare to hope, didn’t dare to move, not a single twitch of a muscle.

 His first kiss with Alfor had been so many years ago but Coran had memorised it, etched it into his soul, the softness of his mustache bristling against Alfor’s lips and the way the man tilted his head just slightly to meet Coran’s mouth. Ever since that moment, every kiss they shared bloomed a new promise, a new year together, their fingers tangled and hopelessly inseparable. Coran’s heart was hopelessly inseparable, intertwined with Alfor’s in each step they took together. He had never and would never love another being more. 

 Watching him sacrifice himself for Coran and Allura broke Coran’s heart every day. His chest could never quite heal from the wounds that losing Alfor had given him. The loss of this man rent him in two and he never knew which half was still alive.

 Maybe this machine could stitch them back together. 

 The lights brightened for a moment, and Coran bit his lip to try to keep the tears in. This was it, he was going to see Alfor again, he was going to be able to hear his honeyed  _ I love you, my gorgeous man _ , he was going to tell him how much he needed him to be real again. 

 Then the machine sputtered and went black. 

 Coran stared, wide-eyed. This couldn’t be? He did hit the switch, right? It pointed to the ‘on’ direction. The power source remained connected, he didn’t trip on it. The machine seemed still intact, just… empty. Empty and off and not working. 

 Coran let out a strangled sob and covered his face with his hands. He fell to his knees and cried out again, grabbed at them, clutched at his bruised kneecaps. Crawling forward, Coran opened the front panel and began fiddling with the wires and connections, as tears gushed down his face in hot streams. 

 Why couldn’t he have lived out his days with Alfor? Why couldn’t he  _ grow old _ with him?

 And then Coran realised he had two of the wires crossed. Quickly, he undid the fasteners and rewired it correctly, and the machine sparked. He jumped backward, fell onto his side in his haste to get away from the electricity. 

 The machine roared to life. A flicker of a figure flashed, and Coran drew his limbs together against his body. 

 “C-Coran?” Alfor’s voice was garbled and Coran’s heart pounded. 

 “Alfor!” He dragged himself forward. Trying to untangle his limbs like knots, he stood, and Coran beamed at the flickering hologram figure. He reached up to touch Alfor’s outstretched hand, but the moment he did, the program died again and the machine turned black and Coran was left closing his hand on cold, empty air. 

 His heart spasmed and Coran had the heartbreak knocked out of him, or into him, or he didn’t even know, he just  _ hurt _ . No matter what he did, they were oceans apart, worlds apart, lives apart. 

 No matter what he did, they were  _ apart _ . 

 Coran crashed his fist down on the machine and the metal  _ clanged _ in answer.  _ Quiznak _ this, quiznak Alfor, quiz-the-fucking-nak Zarkon and quintessence and all the energy Coran had poured into bringing back the echo of a ghost who wasn’t even really there anymore. He clung to the machine. He’d done nothing but been there for Alfor, took care of his daughter, loved her like she was his own. He’d spent every molecule of his being as a devoted lover and faithful trustee and with everything that he did, he proved how much he loved Alfor. But Coran had let his heart stay silently broken for too long. 

 He should have told Alfor off, he should have argued, he should have pointed out all the  _ shit _ that Zarkon was dragging them blindly into, but Coran trusted Alfor, he loved him, wanted to follow him to the ends of the world, and that’s exactly what happened, and he could never forgive himself for that. He could never forgive Alfor. He could never understand why Alfor didn’t try to stay with them or hop in a cryopod too or somehow just quiznakking  _ stay _ . Coran just wanted Alfor to  _ understand _ . To never have left him to begin with. 

 Coran’s knees weakened and he slid to the ground, fist still hanging onto the machine, as if it were the Altean king himself. “Why didn’t you let me in…” He didn’t even realise he was saying the words at first, but they forced their way out of his mouth, stale and long overdo. Thousands and thousands of years overdo. 

 “You never let me in.” Coran clutched at the cold metal. “If we could have just talked about this...if you’d listened to me..” He leaned forward and his forehead laid against the hard, freezing surface. 

 Alfor had wanted to save him, to save Allura, to save Voltron and what little they had left of Altea, but Coran didn’t feel saved. Alfor had punished him, had banished him to a life of pain and sorrow. His heart wasted away and Coran could feel every thread of himself unraveling. The machine wasn’t going to work and Zarkon had a huge head-start on them at every moment. Everything they tried to do didn’t get them ahead, it just  _ undid _ a tiny piece of all of the mud that Zarkon had buried the galaxy in. They wouldn’t be done mucking him out anytime soon, and Alfor quiznakking knew that, he  _ knew _ he was setting them up for failure. Ten thousand years is too long to let your enemy run rampant. Ten thousand years is too long to live in limbo, in purgatory, and Coran had ten thousand years of guilt and anger boiling up inside him. 

 “I trusted you.” His eyes ached from squeezed them shut so hard. “I trusted you to tell me, to keep me updated, to not let things get out of hand.” Coran swallowed, sucked at the air like he was dying. “I trusted you to love me.” His hand fell to his lap. He shivered. “I trusted you to love me like I loved you, I trusted you to come back, I trusted you not to leave in the first place.”

 He knew it was irrational, that of course Alfor would never leave him, that he’d died and it wasn’t his fault, but,  _ fuck this quiznakking shit _ , Coran had never gotten to grieve like this and he wanted Alfor to know it. It was all Alfor’s fault. He had spent every moment of his entire existence living for Alfor, even after he was gone, and Coran was exhausted. 

 He sobbed. He cried. He wept with his whole body, shoulders shaking and hands trembling and limbs jelly and the tears spilled out of him, gushed out, streaking his face and he couldn’t do this anymore, he couldn’t hold on like this, he couldn’t live in the past. Coran couldn’t  _ ache _ anymore. He couldn’t lose sleep and spend all of his time and energy trying to bring back something that wasn’t there, that hadn’t been there for ten thousand years. Ten thousand years of a memory that he couldn’t even touch. 

 Coran couldn’t touch Alfor, and this machine wasn’t going to fix that. He let it go, sat back slowly. Nothing he could do would bring the king back, but Coran  _ could _ stop living in the past and rebuilding old machines that didn’t hold anything for him anymore. Maybe that was easier said than done, but ghosts would never hold the truth and Coran’s hands were empty and his raw heart had been drained dry. He hiccupped, wiped his face on his sleeve. 

 The machine never lit up again.

 But Allura did, when Coran walked into the training deck and he smiled at her. She smiled back, radiant and beaming, eyes glittering and bright, and Coran’s heart wasn’t so empty anymore.

 He didn’t need to forgive Alfor to know that saving Allura had been the right choice. 

 Nodding to her, Coran retreated to his room and thought to himself that Alfor wasn’t really the love of his life anymore. He took his journal out, flipped it open to a pink Altean flower pressed between the pages, and let his face relax in a grin. 


End file.
